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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH
2015
In January 2015, Acrolinx launched a research project to read and
evaluate the world’s content. Using a proprietary linguistic analytics
engine, our software reviewed 150,000 individual, public-facing web
pages from 340 companies around the world. That represents 20
million sentences and over 160 million words.
Content marketing is one of the highest priorities for
today’s marketers, with growth rates for content
development and distribution skyrocketing.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, for
example, 70 percent of marketers are investing more
in content marketing than ever before.1
A recent
research report from global market intelligence
firm IDC further underscores the point, noting that
“building out content marketing as an organizational
competency” is one of CMOs’ most important
initiatives, second only to measuring ROI.2
Although over the past few years content marketing
has rapidly cemented its position among CMOs as a
strategic priority, it’s still just beginning to emerge
from its infancy. In fact, most leading indicators
suggest that the industry still has a long way to
go to reach maturity. One of the most revealing of
them is how content marketers view their own work.
As recently as October 2014, for example, only 42
percent of B2B marketers thought their content was
effective, while among B2C marketers, confidence
rates were even lower at just 34 percent.3
When it comes to explaining this underwhelming
performance, the marketing community often cites
a lack of strategy as the main culprit. In fact,
according to research from Altimeter Group, 70
percent of marketers lack a consistent or integrated
content strategy.4
But that’s only part of the problem. After all, even
the very best strategy won’t translate into effective
content if your writing isn’t very good. This is an
obvious but nevertheless important point because
it’s often overlooked. Many marketers simply count
on the sheer quantity of their output or their ability to
amplify their messages through new tools and
technologies to save the day. That approach may
work for a short time, but it’s not a winning solution
over the long term. The key to creating successful
content that achieves a desired impact is ensuring
that it’s really good, and that starts with the quality
of the writing.
1 The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, “Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends,” October 2014.
2 IDC, “What Is Content Marketing? One of Marketing’s Most Critical New Competencies,” November 2014.
3 The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, “Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends,” October 2014.
4 Altimeter Group, “The 2014 State of Digital Transformation,” July 2014.
70 percent of marketers are investing more in
content marketing, but most aren’t satisfied with
the effectiveness of their content.

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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH
2015
When attention to quality is overlooked, things
tend to fall apart quickly. Consider, for example,
that according to a survey by translation service
provider Global Lingo, 74 percent of respondents are
conscious of the quality of spelling and grammar on
company websites. Of them, 59 percent indicated
that bad grammar and careless spelling mistakes
would prevent them from making a purchase from a
website because they wouldn’t trust the company to
provide good service.5
How’s that for the impact of
content quality on effectiveness?
Not only does content quality impact audience
perceptions, search engines like Google and Bing
are just as unforgiving. Bing’s Duane Forrester
notes, for example, that “just as you’re judging
others’ writing, so the engines judge yours. If you
struggle to get past typos, why would an engine
show a page of content with errors higher in the
rankings when other pages of content exist to serve
the searcher?”
Of course, content quality is about a lot more than
just spelling and grammar. It’s also determined by
other critically important, and yet often overlooked
factors, like style, tone, and clarity, which are just as
essential to engage your audience, build trust, and
create a better overall customer experience. It was
against this backdrop that Acrolinx launched this
research initiative focused on measuring content
quality. For this initial report, we used our linguistic
analytics software to evaluate the content from
340 companies spanning a variety of industries,
from retail and financial services, to aerospace and
automotive, to high tech and manufacturing. We
focused on larger organizations with more than
$250 million in annual revenue, most of which are
brands you will be familiar with, such as Gucci,
Exxon Mobil, and Harley-Davidson. We also looked
at various types of content, including marketing and
customer support content as well as corporate
communications and technical productcontent.
We evaluated and scored the content based on
its quality and clarity and established benchmark
targets based on best practices. Collectively, this
data forms our Global Content Impact Index, which
we are introducing in the pages that follow and that
we will update and extend on a quarterly basis going
forward. Creating this index is our way of casting a
light on a very important yet often underappreciated
aspect of content marketing: the value of creating
engaging, impactfulcontent.
Our Approach
We evaluated the overall quality of the content by
analyzing it across two main dimensions: grammar
and style. To assess a company’s grammar usage,
we examined its content against bestpractices
for standard grammar conventions and then
calculated how many errors it contained on average
per 1,000 words. Examples of the types of issues
we looked for include subject/verb agreement and
5 Global Lingo, Research Report, November
2013.
Content quality matters. According to a recent survey,
59 percent of respondents said that bad grammar and
spelling mistakes would prevent them from
purchasing from a website.

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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH
2015
use of pronouns and double negatives. Similarly,
we evaluated each company’s style based on 62
separate rules and writing practices (the kind that
you find in The Chicago Manual of Style) and on
our years of linguistic experience.
Our software looked at the companies’ use of
language and structure to identify a variety of style
issues.
Next we looked at clarity, which is a measure of how
easy a piece of content is to read and understand —
something that’s particularly important when you’re
trying to communicate complex ideas. Weevaluated
the clarity of each company’s content by looking at
various factors, such as sentence length, structural
complexity, and word choice.
As part of our analysis, we gave each company
a score for quality and clarity using a 100-point
scale. Using a proprietary algorithm, we then
used these results to derive an overall content
impact score for each company — a measure of
how effective we believe that their writing is. In
our more than a decade of experience, we have
determined that companies need to achieve an
A Connection Between Content Quality and Alexa Rankings?
In addition to our own content scoring, we looked at an external measure of content performance — Alexa
website rankings. Among the companies we reviewed, we found that those with the highest content impact
scores saw on average a 22 percent improvement in their Alexa rankings over the past six months. Conversely,
the companies with the lowest content impact scores saw on average a 9 percent decrease in their rankings
over the same time period (see Figure 1). Admittedly, many factors go into computing a website’s Alexa score,
but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless.
Figure 1: Alexa Website Rankings – Six-Month Trends
Jan ‘15 Mar ‘15Oct ‘14 Dec ‘14
Sample from companies with
low content impact scores
Oct ‘14 Feb ‘15
Sample from companies with
high content impact scores

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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH
2015
overall content impact score of 72 or higher in
order for their content to be effective. As we’ll see,
most companies have not yet reached that level of
content sophistication.
A look at the results
Among the 340 companies whose website content
we evaluated, overall content impact scores ranged
from 55 through 85 points as shown in Figures
2 and 3, representing a substantial variance.
Importantly, only 31 percent of those companies
reached or exceeded our target benchmark score
of 72.
Based on this data we see that despite the
growing adoption of content marketing globally,
maturity levels differ significantly. And,
considering that more than two-thirds of the
companies we reviewed (69 percent) had an overall
content impact score of below 72, we believe there’s
a tremendous need for content marketers to renew
their focus on improving content quality and clarity.
Analyzing the data from a regional and
industry perspective further underscores that this is
a global problem. As Figure 4 shows, while content
quality tends to be relatively consistent from region
to region (with scores of 69.5 for the Americas;
69.8 for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; and
68.1 for Asia Pacific), they’re all below the 72 point
benchmark.
It’s a similar story when you look at the industry
breakdowns with one exception — the retail
sector — earning a score of 73.2. It’s important to
point out that these findings are preliminary. As
we accumulate more data, our intent is to refine,
update, and expand this index on a quarterly basis,
offering new and more detailed insights in future
installments of this report.
Figure 2: Scatter Plot of Content Impact Scores by
Company
85
65
80
60
75
55
70
50
IMPACT
SCORE
INDIVIDUAL
COMPANIES
NUMBEROF
COMPANIES
50-55
160
80
140
60
120
40
100
20
0
IMPACT
SCORE
56-60 61-65 66-71 72-80 80-90
Figure 3: Content Impact Score Distribution

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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH 2015
While our objective at this stage isn’t to call out specific top-
performing companies, we did want to showcase a few examples of
companies that are creating high-quality, readable content that we
believe is extremely effective. These companies include:
“Enjoy a refreshed and refurbished home with home
decor and furniture from Kohl’s! Whether you’re
overhauling your space or just tweaking your home’s
design, you’re sure to find pieces and accents in the
styles you want. From feminine shabby chic to more
masculine sleek and modern, Kohl’s home furnishings
add color, texture and function to your home.”
“Like much of the northeastern United States, the town
of Afton, New York, has been buried — literally — with
snow this winter. Good thing the community has a new
Cat® CT681 Vocational Truck on the job. ‘The town
wanted to borrow it for the Christmas parade,’ says
Kirk Hoyt, the truck’s operator. ‘We said they couldn’t
— we were using it to plow snow!’”
“Think of your car like your body — would you carry a
backpack if you didn’t need to? Of course not: it’d make
you tired, thirsty, grumpy and give you a sore back.
Your car’s the same — the more weight it carries, the
more fuel it uses (and the more wear and tear there is
on tyres, the chassis and suspension). The long-term
effects mean a rest break at the mechanic, and more
money spent on maintenance.”
“Tech should make your life simpler, faster, more
entertaining. It should make you fitter, happier, smarter.
And most importantly it should be exciting and fun. So
what are you waiting for? Make friends with tech and
unleash a digital you with more amazing possibilities.”
American department store Kohl’s has clearly
taken care to create content with a warm,
friendly, and invitingstyle:
Another top performer, Caterpillar, is a company
that’s known for implementing content strategy
on a massive scale. Despite the high-tech
engineering detail that their content needs to
communicate, the company excels at
connecting its technology with specific needs
as seen in this recent blog post.
From Down Under, National Australia Bank
provides a great example of how financial
services firms can go beyond the numbers to
provide practical advice for their audience.
European mobile carrier EE also provides an
excellent example of an engaging,
conversational tone. In the “Clever New Tech”
section of its site you’ll find content like this:

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ACROLINX · GLOBAL CONTENT IMPACT INDEX MARCH
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IS YOUR CONTENT YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OR
YOUR DOWNFALL?
Although content has proven itself to be a critically important component of successful marketing in today’s
online world, all too often companies are sacrificing the quality of their content for quantity. As we’ve seen, most
of the 340 companies we reviewed as part of our initial look at global content quality are producing content that
doesn’t measure up. We believe those companies, and the countless others just like them, will be handicapped
if they don’t start paying more attention to their content quality.
In upcoming editions of this report, we will take a much deeper dive into various aspects of content quality as
part of our ongoing goal to help companies create better content.